Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Noir: ‘We Made a Bogart Movie Where Bogart Is Spider-Man’

Nicolas Cage has been circling superhero mythology for decades — there was that legendary unmade Superman project, then his voice work in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. But nothing he’s done in the genre looks quite like Spider-Noir, the Prime Video series that drops May 27 and asks a question no one in the Spider-Verse has dared to ask before: What if we just made a Bogart movie?

“We’re really trying to make an old Bogart movie,” co-showrunner Oren Uziel said. “It’s just that Bogart happens to be Spider-Man.”

That single idea — deceptively simple, wildly ambitious — drove every creative decision the team made, from the casting to the color palette to the choice to set the whole thing in 1930s Depression-era New York. Uziel, who came in already a fan of both noir and Spider-Man, said he and Cage were aligned from the very beginning on what this show needed to be. “We didn’t want to make a version of Spider-Man that anyone had seen before,” he said. “Nic was never going to do that.”

Why Ben Reilly — and Not Peter Parker

The most immediate signal that this isn’t your standard Spider-Man story? The name on the door. Cage plays Ben Reilly, a seasoned, down-on-his-luck private investigator who is forced back into his life as the city’s one and only superhero following a deeply personal tragedy. Peter Parker doesn’t exist in this universe — at least not yet, with Uziel leaving the door deliberately open for future seasons.

The reasoning was straightforward. “Peter Parker is so synonymous to me with a young character and a coming-of-age story,” Uziel explained. That’s not the story they were telling. This Spider-Man is older, wearier, and has already been through the worst of it. “He is older, he is wiser, he is maybe a little less excited to do it all,” added co-showrunner Steve Lightfoot, who previously served as showrunner on Marvel’s The Punisher.

Lamorne Morris, who plays journalist and Reilly confidant Robbie Robertson, put it in terms that cut right to the heart of what Cage was building. “His whole thing is he is a spider trying to learn how to be a human. Whereas I think other characters are the reverse — they are humans playing the spider — and I think it’s a completely unique take on it.”

Cage pulled from an eclectic set of references to get there. Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Edward G. Robinson — and, yes, Bugs Bunny. “Nic is unlike any other actor you’ve ever seen,” Morris said. “He pulled from Bugs Bunny to play this character.”

Every Day on Set, a New Bogart Scene

Uziel’s own noir touchstones going into the show were considerable — The Third Man, Double Indemnity, The Thin Man, His Girl Friday, Miller’s Crossing, Casablanca, L.A. Confidential. But Cage arrived on set each day with his own specific homework done. “Every single day he’d come to set with a different reference: ‘This is Bogart from The Big Sleep, this is going to be Peter Lorre. This is going to be Edward G. Robinson,’” Uziel recalled.

That level of commitment had a gravitational pull on the rest of the cast. Brendan Gleeson, who plays lead antagonist and crime boss Silvermane, described working opposite Cage as an experience in creative generosity. “It was just a joy to be working with Nic because you toss it across and it comes back with twice a spin on it.”

Jack Huston, who plays Flint Marko — better known as Sandman — said the show’s characters take on a larger symbolic weight in the process. The heroes and villains “become a bit of their own metaphor and that’s a beautiful thing.” Lucas Shaw described the result as a new kind of “badass adult” version of Spider-Man, something the franchise simply hasn’t produced before.

For producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — the creative architects of the Spider-Verse film universe — the tonal blend was always the point. “It should be funny. Nic is a funny person. Spider-Man was always quippy. And some of our favorite noirs are really funny, but also emotional,” Miller said. “As the show gets weirder, you’re letting Nic be Nic.”

The Black-and-White Decision — and the Fight to Keep It

Shooting in black and white in 2026 is not a small ask. Cage knew that, and he knew the studio was nervous about it. So he came up with a solution himself.

“I could tell that some of the folks in the studio were nervous,” Cage said at Wednesday’s New York premiere, where he walked the carpet alongside Morris, Huston, Gleeson, Li Jun Li, Karen Rodriguez, Lukas Haas, and Abraham Popoola. “So I said, ‘You don’t only have to shoot it in black and white; you can also get teenagers, who might be watching, by shooting in color with almost a colorized feel. And maybe that’ll make them interested in watching it in black and white.’”

The creative team was fully on board. Miller said from the beginning they were committed to shooting “with intention for black and white” — not converting it as an afterthought. That single decision shaped everything: performances, music, cinematography. Executive producer Dan Shear clarified that when Amazon came to the production asking for a color version to accompany the black-and-white release, the team accepted it as a creative challenge rather than a compromise. “We accepted the challenge, worked out our plan for it and it was really seen as an efficient, effective production,” Shear said.

For Cage, the color version isn’t a sellout — it’s a gateway. “My dream is that [young viewers] will see the black and white after they do the color, and they’re going to want to look at the old movies, all that great wealth of American cinema that we have,” he said. “I also say, it doesn’t matter if a 13-year-old doesn’t know who Humphrey Bogart is. It works.”

The show was also retitled from simply Noir to Spider-Noir ahead of release. Shear explained the thinking: “It’s really a merging of two genres. We’re telling a noir, but we’re also telling a Spider-Verse show and the title represents the intersection of those genres, which kind of creates a third new thing that we hadn’t seen before.”

Built to Run for Seasons

The eight-episode first season expands on the Spider-Man Noir character who first appeared in animated form in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 — though the creative team is clear this is its own, broader story. “They’re connected for sure. There’s inspiration being taken there,” Uziel said. “But when you’re making an eight-episode television series, you’re going to really expand it and broaden it. In live action, you get to see so much more of Nic’s performance and you can really fully realize New York in the ’30s.”

Lightfoot was equally firm that despite the period setting, the show needed to feel alive right now. “We wanted to be truthful to the period, but we never wanted it to feel like a pastiche. We wanted it to be its own thing, and if you’re writing a show now, it’s hopefully going to speak to now.”

As for what comes next, Lord and Miller aren’t playing coy. “We are television producers. We’re not gonna say no,” Lord said. Miller added that he “would be happy to do more.”

And Uziel made the case for why this world could sustain as many stories as anyone wants to tell. “One of the magical things about any private detective story is, if you want another story, all it takes is another client to knock on that door, and then comes a new set of cases, a new set of problems and a new adventure to go on.”

Spider-Noir hits Prime Video on May 27 in both black-and-white and color.